Trouble logging in?We were forced to invalidate all account passwords. You will have to reset your password to login. If you have trouble resetting your password, please send us a message with as much helpful information as possible, such as your username and any email addresses you may have used to register. Whatever you do, please do not create a new account. That is not the right solution, and it is against our forum rules to own multiple accounts.

I don't know if anyone here has been following it already (or would be inclined to, given its provenance); but there has been a Kickstarter campaign in the works for a tabletop game called Robotech: RPG Tactics, which for now is exclusively based on the Macross-derived portion of that side of things.

It had an initial funding goal of US$50,000, but has now reached over a million US dollars at this point, with just over a day to go before it's locked in.

While it shows just how much money there is out there to be thrown at the concept, one wonders how much of that funding is there because it's "Macross" (or rather, the closest one can get to it in the West at present), because it's "Robotech" (for those who buy into Harmony Gold's universe), or because it's "Unseen" (in the sense that many of the actual units involved have a somewhat convoluted history of their own over in BattleTech).

Hey, I used to love that show ( at least the Macross related parts ) before I became aware of the vastly superior Macross.

I'd wonder if the BattleTech related aspect has much pull. BattleTech is mostly dead ( and not in the Miracle Max type of way ), with only a few hold-outs really dedicated to it. I think RoboTech has still lots of fans in the U.S. If only they'd knew what they are missing...

While it's perhaps fair to say that BattleTech isn't at the heights of popularity it might once have enjoyed, the game isn't dead just yet. Catalyst (who recently signed a long-term licence extension with Topps for the BT and Shadowrun game licences) have been pumping out a steady stream of English-language books for the setting, while Ulisses Spiele are busy translating them into German for the D-A-CH market.

(Actually, Ulisses have a series of novels which they have been publishing that aren't even available in English yet, such as a trilogy set during the Andurien Wars of the 3030s.)

Also, Catalyst will be releasing a new rulebook called Alpha Strike, which may help make the setting somewhat more accessable than it is at present in game play terms.

But in any case, there are still a number of the stretch goal items in the KS that are no use as Unseen (such as the recently-unlocked SDF-1, which has no counterpart in BT).

As for the KS itself, it's already passed the US$1.2M mark as of this writing; the YF-4 will be added in if the total passes 1.3M before 10PM EST tonight.

While it's perhaps fair to say that BattleTech isn't at the heights of popularity it might once have enjoyed, the game isn't dead just yet. Catalyst (who recently signed a long-term licence extension with Topps for the BT and Shadowrun game licences) have been pumping out a steady stream of English-language books for the setting, while Ulisses Spiele are busy translating them into German for the D-A-CH market.

(Actually, Ulisses have a series of novels which they have been publishing that aren't even available in English yet, such as a trilogy set during the Andurien Wars of the 3030s.)

Also, Catalyst will be releasing a new rulebook called Alpha Strike, which may help make the setting somewhat more accessable than it is at present in game play terms.

Sure, the last holdouts are still buying books, but the franchise has lost most of its popularity, at least in the tabletop category. The fanbase is getting older and new blood isn't coming in. But that's what happens if you timejump the setting 100 years, THEN abandon that new highly unpopular timeline and try to return to the original timeline, while still slavishly following the events laid out in the new, abandoned, unpopular timeline.

Sometimes I think Kawamori really has a thing with his malleable continuity fetish.

Video games are of course another thing, although I am not a fan of the fremium model for MWO.

I don't want to go too far into derailing this thread by talking about BattleTech here; but, for what it's worth, I'm hoping that Alpha Strike (which, I should note, will be presented initially as a Clan Invasion product) and the revised Introductory Box Set will help bring flesh blood into the BT franchise.

But so far as different eras go, Catalyst have made a point of providing support to a wide variety of time periods, and not sidelining support for one in place of another. It has taken a long time for them (and for FanPro before them) to bridge the gap between 3067 and 3085; and while they have been doing so, they have also been publishing works set further back in the "classic" timeline.

In fact, as recently as earlier this year, they had been publishing historical files fleshing out the late Star League era as a proper game setting, with two volumes covering the Amaris Coup and Kerensky's Liberation of Terra. And over the next couple of years, along with their work on the Dark Age and beyond, they will be publishing new books looking at the Succession Wars directly.

And once the "3145" material covering the Dark Age is done, they will be making their own move to a new time period; one which Catalyst themselves will have full control over, and which (for the first time on over a decade) will be a "future of BT" that has not been spoiled to the audience by a semi-related game system.

Yes, there will be those who stick with their preferred era, and will bypass or ignore what comes later (or, indeed, earlier) in the timeline. And for soem fo those players, this KS project has been useful to them. But while I await to be proved otherwise, I'd like to think that BT as a whole still has a future ahead of it, even if it may never re-gain the lofty heights it held once upon a time.